Is this CRM course nationally recognised?

The register is the list

The National Register, at training.gov.au, is Australia's national training register: a searchable database of providers and nationally recognised training. It holds the training packages, qualifications, units of competency, skill sets and accredited courses, and the details of the registered training organisations approved to deliver nationally recognised training, their registration status, and the training each is registered to deliver, its scope of registration.

All nationally recognised training is listed there, so a course whose training product is not on the register is not nationally recognised training.

One thing worth knowing before a search: the register is administered by the Australian Government department, not by ASQA. ASQA is the national regulator for the vocational education and training sector, and it does not manage the national register.

The provider and its scope

An RTO registered with ASQA is registered under the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011, and that registration means it can deliver VET courses to domestic students: Australian citizens, permanent residents, and temporary visitors who are not on student visas.

What it may deliver is its scope of registration, and the register holds it. Check the organisation, then check that the unit or qualification you were offered falls inside what it is registered to deliver.

Registration has two state paths, in Victoria and Western Australia: an applicant seeking to deliver VET courses only in Victoria applies to the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, and one seeking to deliver only in Western Australia applies to the Western Australian Training Accreditation Council. An applicant based in either state applies to ASQA instead if it will offer courses in another state or territory, including online, or to overseas students, and one delivering in the ACT, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia or Tasmania applies to ASQA.

And a newly registered organisation is not permitted to apply to add training products to its approved scope until it has been registered for a period of 24 months or more.

The logo rules

The Nationally Recognised Training logo is a distinguishable mark of quality for promoting and certifying national vocational education and training leading to AQF certification documentation. Only NVR registered training organisations may use it, and only under the policy that governs it.

Use is permitted only where there is a direct relationship to an AQF qualification or unit of competency. In promotional material the logo must not create the impression that it applies to all of an organisation's training where that is not the case, and material that refers to other training the organisation offers must clearly distinguish nationally recognised training within its scope from that other training.

The logo must be on all AQF certification documentation an NVR registered training organisation issues, and must not be on other testamurs or transcripts of results. It must not be used in a way that creates misleading impressions. It must not go on corporate stationery, business cards, building signage, merchandise or learning resources, and it can only be reproduced from copies provided by the national regulator.

Where the logo promotes training, that training must be within the organisation's scope of registration.

What a claim may and may not say

The Australian Consumer Law sits over all of this. A person must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.

The ACCC's guidance to business puts the same rule in plainer words: you must not make false or misleading claims or statements, for example that goods are of a particular standard, quality, value or grade. It makes no difference whether a business intends to mislead. Any statement that creates a false impression about goods and services can be breaking the law, and claims about products and services should be accurate, true and based on reasonable grounds.

That rule reaches any statement about a service, a claim of accreditation or national recognition included, and the training side has its own regulator in ASQA, the national regulator for the vocational education and training sector.

Western Australia adds its own offences, and they are Western Australian law: an offence to claim or purport to confer an approved or prescribed VET qualification that is not one, and an offence to claim or purport to be a registered training provider when the person is not, or has been ordered not to operate in the State.

A course with no code

A course with no code on the register is not nationally recognised training.

What it can honestly be is training of another kind. Accredited courses are the other recognised kind: a course is developed for accreditation when a training need is not covered by a training package qualification and the course needs to be nationally recognised, and accreditation means it has been independently assessed by ASQA or a state regulator and meets the Standards for VET Accredited Courses 2021 and the Australian Qualifications Framework. All accredited courses are listed on the register with their course codes, titles and approved RTOs, and only registered training organisations can deliver them.

Anything else is training outside the national system. Where a registered training organisation uses the Nationally Recognised Training logo in promotional material that also refers to its other training, the material must clearly distinguish nationally recognised training within its scope from that other training.

The check, then, is short. Find the code, open its record on the register, read the organisation against its scope of registration, and check that the product has not expired, been removed or been deleted from the register.